Browse Items (16472 total)

The activities of Pandarus in TC and Celestina in Gernando de Rojas's "Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea" show the similarities in the panderer's roles and the fundamental disparities between Chaucer's and Rojas's visions. Celestina's world is…

Although the heroine speaks bravely in TC of being her "owene womman," Chaucer's "would-be feminist" is continually victimized by the male-dominated society largely responsible for her limited views about sexual roles.

Chaucer's treatment of Cassandra in TC illustrates his changes in the tone and import of Boccaccio's "Filostrato." Whereas Boccaccio's portrayal provides interesting psychological study, Chaucer's Cassandra introduces a philosophical context by…

Criseyde's "aubes" of TC, III and IV, wherein she swears her constancy to Troilus, ironically recall the "impossibilia" of anti-feminist lying-songs, which warned men not to put trust in women.

In TC 5.543, the use of the participle "queynt" (quenched) may have been meant by Chaucer as a pun on the noun "queynt" (pudendum). Although the pun may have been intentional, it is irrelevant to the passage in which it appears, syntactically…

BD is about art as well as consolation--the art that engages real attention with its game and objectifies grief only to escape into its own fixity and so shatter finally on the existentiality of loss.

In BD, Chaucer, working in a tradition of courtly style, composes a poem of consolation. Within a beautiful poem of human sympathy, Chaucer effects a critique of courtly language and exposes the inability of such language to express profound…

The narrator of BD, who sees in the tale of Ceyx and Alcyone an exemplum of the loss of their "golden age" love, realizes that the love of the knight is an analogue of the happy fulfillment of the couple's love. Thus, the actual consolation of the…

The dreamer's experience in BD is an amplification of the Ceyx and Alceone story. The Black Knight and the dreamer may be seen as the same person, the dream providing a means of facing the fact of death.

In medieval narrative theory, "aporia" is set forth as a way of examining the moment when the ironic process begins. BD relies on a withdrawal from literal statement which brings the author's intention to the reader through the process of irony.

A St. Valentine's Day entertainment, PF emphasizes the inevitable, though unembraced, participation in "kynde" of its audience. The narrator's use and misuse of his authorities frustrate the expectations of his readers, thereby forcing them to…

The organic model of unity does not fit discontinuous, dilated, expository, encyclopedic medieval works such as PF. A model more "multiple" deserves hegemony.

The lists of lovers in PF extend Chaucer's commentary on the common profit. The lovers cited all neglected their political and social responsibilities for love.

In PF Proem, Chaucer uses the "Somnium" to maintain that the chasm between terrestrial and celestial love is bridgeable. Common profit is a moral and spiritual concept through which human love can assume greater order and direction.

Dame Patience sitting "upon an hil of sond" (PF, 242-43) may come from the second recension of Deguileville's "Pelerinage de la vie humaine" where the persistence of an ant in reaching the top of a sand hill might be thought of as the active…

Ovid is an important source for Gower's "Confessio" and for LGW. However, there is evidence that both authors also made first-hand use of Livy.

LGW provides an important statement of Chaucer's poetics. It recognizes his genuine debt to his French contemporaries. The poet-dreamer does not reject or parody the tradition of "fin amor," but under its direction he acknowledges the poet's duty…

LGW contains examples of "the destructive results of excessive passion." Classical, patristic, and medieval attitudes to Cleopatra are negative; Chaucer is thus ironic.

David E. Lampe's thesis that the word "Vache" in "Truth," 22, is an iconographic pun is falsely reasoned on several accounts, the most glaring of which is that "vacca" has several evil connotations in addition to the favorable "worldly renunciation"…

Imitative indirect discourse in the portraits of the Monk, Friar, and Parson presents attitudes not Chaucer's in language not his. Examining personae in early tales may alter the pilgrim's portrait or the tone, as when the Merchant's ironic praises…

Alongside January's outright parody of "Canticum Canticorum," a web of allusions thereto sets up an ironic juxtaposition of May and the Virgin Mary, reinforcing the bitterness permeating MerT; these subtle allusions also reflect the Merchant's desire…

When King Alfred translated Boethius' "Consolation," he changed some of the materials so that it could be understood by his people whereas Chaucer tried to translate as accurately as his Middle English would allow. The two translations are as…

Assesses the relations between the dreamer and the narrator in BD, PF, HF, and LGW.

Includes passim references to Chaucer's works and reprints as "Monks and Incubi in Chaucer" (pp. 51-55) a slightly revised version of "The Wife of Bath's Tale, D 878-81," (Chaucer Review 7 (1972): 113-17).

Traces common elements in narratives that include the pear-tree motif, including MerT and Decameron 7.9.